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$xhtml = array(
	'<{title}>' => 'Do they regret pushing so hard?',
	'takedown' => '2017-11-01',
	'<{body}>' => <<<END
<img src="/img/CC_BY-SA_4.0/y.st./weblog/2019/06/01.jpg" alt="Over one bridge then under the other" class="framed-centred-image" width="800" height="480"/>
<section id="diet">
	<h2>Dietary intake</h2>
	<p>
		For breakfast, I had 41 grams of corn chips and 220 grams of salsa.
		For lunch, I had a veggie patty, tapioca cheese, mustard, and ketchup sandwich, with a pickle and a 544-gram smoothie on the side.
		My dinner was the same as my lunch, but without the smoothie.
	</p>
</section>
<section id="drudgery">
	<h2>Drudgery</h2>
	<p>
		My discussion post for the day:
	</p>
	<blockquote>
		<p>
			Mobile devices are becoming increasingly common, but I don&apos;t think that that&apos;s the reason the mobile application industry has exploded into what it is today.
			You didn&apos;t see the same sort of explosion for desktop applications.
			Rather, there&apos;s a different mindset people have when it comes to mobiles.
			Very few of us seem to realise that our mobiles are pocket computers.
			And as such, people treat them differently.
			For some reason, the industry has managed to convince people to install dozens of applications that they don&apos;t need.
			Why do users do it?
			I&apos;m not sure.
			Why do businesses push these applications though?
			Much of it&apos;s for spying on users.
			Many of these applications record where the device - and therefore the user - is.
			The applications report to the companies, for example, when you&apos;re geographically near one of their stores.
			I haven&apos;t seen this myself, as I&apos;ve always run a Replicant (basically Android but with the proprietary Google garbage stripped out) and never installed company-specific applications, but nearly everyone I know complains that ads pop up on their mobile when they&apos;re near certain businesses, and those ads are always about the business they&apos;re near.
			The device is reporting their location, and they&apos;re being served ads based on it.
			This is one of the huge driving factors pushing mobile development beyond what you&apos;d expect on the desktop.
			You don&apos;t see companies rolling out company-specific desktop apps and trying to get users to install them, most likely because companies can&apos;t track your movements with a desktop application the way they can with a mobile application.
		</p>
		<p>
			As for cloud storage being more reliable, I suppose that&apos;s a good point.
			You have to keep in mind that you&apos;ve got much less privacy that way though.
			Anything personal, such as photographs and other private files, probably shouldn&apos;t be stored in the cloud.
			I can see why you store your coursework there though.
			There&apos;s nothing particularly private or sensitive about coursework submissions.
			As for your claim that we all rely on cloud storage, I strongly disagree.
			Some of us never took our stuff to the cloud, and likely never will.
			I much prefer the privacy and security that my home server offers.
			It&apos;s fair to say that <strong>*most*</strong> people rely on cloud storage, but certainly not <strong>*all*</strong>.
		</p>
	</blockquote>
</section>
<section id="religion">
	<h2>Religious study</h2>
	<p>
		The missionaries showed up half an hour late, then said they could only stay for half an hour.
		But then they stayed for a full hour.
	</p>
	<p>
		They talked a lot about the atonement of Jesus, but none of what they said made any sense.
		For example, it&apos;s &quot;because of the atonement&quot; that you&apos;re able to call upon Jesus for forgiveness.
		Because you can receive that forgiveness, you don&apos;t have to spend eternity plagued with guilt over every little thing that you&apos;ve done wrong.
		Why are you unable to ask for forgiveness without Jesus having to have suffered the weight of the world?
		Or alternatively, why would Jesus be unable to forgive you if he hadn&apos;t suffered?
		In what way does the atonement at all affect this equation?
		Also, Jesus took on the punishment &quot;to fulfil the law&quot;.
		But if the law says you are to be punished for what you&apos;ve done wrong, in what way does <strong>*someone else*</strong> taking on your punishment fulfil that law?
		How does them getting punished even help you?
		And if punishment can be transferred like that, in what way is the law system in place &quot;just&quot;?
		You have to keep in mind that Jesus and Elohim are supposedly highly &quot;just&quot; beings.
	</p>
	<p>
		The missionaries want me to direct my studies specifically toward learning about the atonement.
		I can&apos;t keep skipping around like this though, or I&apos;ll never actually get their religious works fully read.
		So I&apos;m not doing that.
		I might look into other people&apos;s take on the atonement, but as for the actual scriptures, I&apos;m going to continue reading them in a logical order.
		In particular though, they want me to check out this one book, which I don&apos;t think technically qualifies as scripture.
		They claim that aside from the four main books the Mormons believe to be sacred, it&apos;s the most important book on the atonement.
		From the sounds of it, it was written much later than any of the other books, so it&apos;s likely to still be encumbered by copyright.
		For that reason, I won&apos;t mention it here by name.
		I might see if I can pirate a copy so I can see what the missionaries are trying to show me though, and see if the arguments it presents hold water whatsoever.
		The rest of the arguments they&apos;ve presented me with certainly don&apos;t.
	</p>
	<p>
		The missionaries want me to pray for them on Tuesday.
		Apparently, they&apos;re giving a talk to about eighty other missionaries on how to pray properly.
		Tuesday won&apos;t be an overly busy day, so I should easily be able to work that in.
		I&apos;ve completely stopped praying, but I suppose I&apos;ll pray for them anyway as a show of good faith.
		Why not.
		I&apos;ll have time to spare.
	</p>
	<p>
		I was looking forward to meeting with the missionaries today, as I&apos;d been hoping to tell them about my thought on the blessing they&apos;d offered me.
		If they could tell me things they shouldn&apos;t know but that I already know, that would be pretty convincing that they&apos;re in touch with some higher power.
		Today though, I decided not to bring it up.
		What I planned to ask of them is beyond their power.
		If they hope to accomplish it, they really will need the help of some higher power, which is exactly the point.
		But being beyond their power, I shouldn&apos;t push too hard.
		I&apos;d wait until they eventually brought it up, if they even decided to bring it up again, as they likely would.
		They actually brought it up as they were leaving though.
		So I laid my plan on them.
		I explained what it was I was looking for in a blessing.
		They said they needed to talk to their mission stake president first, then prepare.
		It sounded like basic protocol stuff, the way they put it.
		It didn&apos;t seem specific to the difficulty of my request.
		But also, they said that they weren&apos;t promising anything specific, as they don&apos;t have enough faith to get my middle name from the Holy Ghost.
		I guess when you have more faith, you can ask the Holy Ghost more specific questions?
		They said they&apos;d tell me during the blessing whatever it is that Jesus wants told to me though.
		If I wasn&apos;t able to request particular information though, why did they want me to come up with a specific question to have answered by the blessing?
		I mean, I get why they&apos;re having the about face now.
		I&apos;ve requested what cannot be done without their gods, but as their gods don&apos;t actually exist, they don&apos;t have the resources they need for this.
		No matter how much they believe, they&apos;ll never have enough faith to pull this off, as no amount of faith could ever do the trick.
		But what excuse, within the context of their religion supposedly being true, do they have to pull a one eighty like this?
		I wonder if they regret coming on so strong and continually pushing that I get a blessing.
		I&apos;m morbidly curious as to what they&apos;ll say Jesus has to say to me though.
		If they make the mistake of claiming Jesus wants me to Know I&apos;m a man, which I most assuredly am not, that&apos;ll be the end of their welcome in my home.
		I&apos;m not sure if they realise that, but it shouldn&apos;t be too hard to guess, given that I entirely quit coming to church when I learned that their religion does not accept us queers.
	</p>
	<p>
		Oh, yeah, I forgot to mention that the missionaries invited me back to church again.
		This time, I gave them the analogy I meant to give them last time.
		They&apos;re trying to shove a square peg into a round hole, then claim that there&apos;s a place for the square peg because it&apos;s not a square peg at all, but a round one.
		They deny that square pegs exist, so they can&apos;t recognise one when they see it.
		As they keep pushing, which they probably will, I&apos;ll get more and more explicit.
		Next time, I hope to bring up exactly what it means to try to box me into one of the binary genders, and why that&apos;s so offensive.
	</p>
</section>
END
);
